The Doomsday Clock is an internationally recognized design that conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging... Read More

Today, more than 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board have looked closely at the world situation and found it so threatening that the hands of the Doomsday Clock must once again be set at three minutes to midnight.

A careful review of threats leads the Bulletin's Science and Security Board to conclude that the risk of civilization-threatening technological catastrophe remains high, and that the hands of the Doomsday Clock should therefore remain at five minutes to midnight.

Who can be mobilized as a counterweight to the perpetuation of the nuclear arsenal?Workers in the nuclear weapons complex, doctors, independent scientists, and journalists all have direct interests in nuclear disarmament.

In the classic film Dr. Strangelove, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper was the ultimate insider threat. As the nuclear-armed B-52s that Ripper unilaterally dispatched proceeded toward their Soviet targets, the American president confronted Air Force Gen. Buck Turgidson in exasperation: "When you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring." To which Turgidson replied, "Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

At the Seventh Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference in Geneva last December, the treaty's 165 member states agreed to a new intersessional process of work to be done in preparation for the next such conference, in 2016. This new process retained the limited aim ("to discuss, and promote common understanding and effective action") of the previous two intersessional processes, but it did restructure the convention's annual meeting of experts and state parties within the process.

When scientist Ron Fouchier, from Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, presented his research at a conference in Malta last year, he described how he and his colleagues induced mutations into the H5N1 virus, ultimately giving the deadly virus the ability to become airborne and transmit infection as efficiently as the seasonal flu. Fouchier was ostensibly trying to learn more about the virus in order to protect humanity from its dangers, but his work also meant risking that the virus he created would escape the lab or be mimicked by a rogue scientist with terrorist ties.

The past nine months have been trying for researchers who study the H5N1 avian influenza virus, the committees that have been discussing dual-use research in the life sciences, and the entities that fund and publish such research. The details have been reported in many venues and need only brief summary here: Two laboratories funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) embarked on studies to determine whether the H5N1 virus -- a bird flu virus that has caused a relatively small number of human deaths -- could be made to transmit between people.

Recent months have seen an increasingly confusing debate about new research on the adaptability and transmissibility of avian influenza A/H5N1, which was undertaken by groups in the Netherlands and the United States. Both studies were funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and research results were sent for publication to Science and Nature, respectively.

We've been lucky. The avian influenza (H5N1) virus that first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 -- which killed six and caused 18 serious illnesses -- has not acquired the ability to spread easily from person to person. Virtually all of the reported cases have involved contact with infected birds or bird products.

There are increasing signs that state parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) realize that the lack of biosecurity awareness and education among life scientists represents a serious gap in the overall web of policies designed to prevent bioterrorism and biowarfare. Without such awareness and education, how can practicing life scientists contribute their expertise to the development and implementation of oversight systems and codes of conduct necessary to protect benignly intended work from hostile misuse?

There is an old joke that always makes me smile. It goes something like this:

A visitor to Ireland was in Cork and needed to get to Dublin quickly, so he asked a local what the best way to drive was. The answer came back after a short pause for thought: "If I was going to Dublin, I wouldn't start from here."

I first realized the power of intranasal drug delivery after reading a 2005 paper in Nature entitled "Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans." In it, the authors--several psychologists, neuroscientists, and economists--reported on a study based on a game that pitted two players against each other--an investor and a trustee. (You may be wondering what this has to do with oxytocin, a neuropeptide involved in mammalian social behaviour, but bear with me!) The investor has the option of donating his money to the trustee.

In interdisciplinary discussions there are usually disagreements over terminology. I noticed this firsthand at a January seminar I attended in Australia that brought together some 40 natural scientists, social scientists, philosophers, ethicists, and policy makers to discuss the role and limits of ethics in regards to the dual-use problem in the life sciences.

It isn't a good time to be a Member of Parliament (MP) in London. With the roasting the domestic media gave to some MPs for their inflated expense claims during a recession, many people must surely feel that little of value goes on in the Westminster Parliament. Nevertheless, it's important to give credit where credit is due.

Since the Second Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1986, States Parties have made suggestions for how to educate life scientists about and raise awareness of the dual-use implications of their benignly intended work. But little truly has been done to engage scientists on the subject.

Well-informed scientists disagree about whether classic dual-use experiments, such as the genetic manipulation of mouse pox and the sequencing and synthesis of 1918 Spanish Influenza, should have been carried out and/or published. Given this acrimony, an ethical analysis might help as the revolution in the life sciences continues apace. Bioethicists, who have not yet engaged much with the dual-use problem in the life science community, are beginning to apply their expertise to these questions, and the early results suggest that easy answers are still lacking.

In a previous column, I discussed how the recent U.S. buildup of high-containment biodefense laboratories might inadvertently increase the risk of another bioterrorist attack by increasing the number of researchers who have expertise and access to dangerous pathogens. One response to this risk has been to oversee research facilities and monitor the acquisition of microbes.

According to the industry, nuclear energy is on the verge of an enormous resurgence, fulfilling the promise that was thwarted by the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island reactor accidents, the Washington Public Power Supply System financial collapse, and other misadventures. These upbeat accounts point to new technology, legislation, energy realities, and management teams as reasons for optimism. Skeptics portray these opportunities as mirages, obscuring the unresolved problems that undermined nuclear expansion plans a generation ago.

Earlier this year, I wrote about preparations for the December 5th meeting between States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). I warned that in addition to agreeing to a broad agenda, the States Parties needed to begin acting to make this agenda a reality.